Disruptive Frontline Gameplay

[KenZentra]

Fights should be interesting, somewhat close, just using the best exploit available is the typical western mentality, where as respect for the players you are with as well as the opponents is an entire different story.

So instead of trying to cooperate with someone who is making an effort to coordinate things, you make an effort to sabotage the game because you're a special snowflake. Speak for yourself when you say stuff like it gets on everyone's nerves, you are everything that's wrong with western mentality.

The fact that FL draws in so many clueless people who are just here for their quick XP, the general western mentality about doing minimal (mental) effort is a bigger issue imo.

Oh my god, you two talk like THOSE relatives at Thanksgiving dinners. Please get over whatever culture thing you guys have a hookup on, it really has no place in this conversation.

[Akimitsu]

You literally came here to nitpick sentences from 2 people who are absolutely discussing the topic at hand. Maybe your comment has no place in this conversation? A troll from Goblin, the irony...

Only someone like you would deny the fact that yes, culture does play a part in how we play, while the eastern one tends to focus on coordination and not being a burden for the rest of the people they play with, the western one (for the majority) couldn't give a rat's ass about what they do and how they do it as long as they get their reward. And since they don't care to get better or offer constructive criticism we get this kind of thread, and despite what people may think SE does listen sometimes and then we get reworks that are failures after failures.
I also sincerely hope people realize that, at the moment, baring the intervention of the third GC, the DRK/AST/DRG thing is one of the only sure ways to make a comeback from impending defeats.

[DendrielConcade]

None of this shit will change meaningfully until they do their comically large 7.0 patch that fixes things prior and loads a fuck ton more problems in. You'd think it would be easy for them to handle this shit via number tweaks and gameplay tweaks(Can't charge Limit unless in combat For Frontline, Battle High getting canned or tweaked to not be as heavily impactful as it is, and tweak the Damage Taken by certain classes like DRG having a comically high 50% when it should be like 25%) but noooooo, none of this shit changes in meaningful ways in reasonable times to actually shirk these issues. PvP is a side thing that thankfully for once we're getting more gear for playing it but its also attached to something thats less than ideal to play anyways, I will forever bitch about CC being Push in Overwatch 2 except even more balanced than that shitshow of a game but least the matches are brief in time.

[maximesan514]

they are farming 1k wins achievements, its not about to stop. fyi

[Mawlzy]

You literally came here to nitpick sentences from 2 people who are absolutely discussing the topic at hand. Maybe your comment has no place in this conversation? A troll from Goblin, the irony...

Only someone like you would deny the fact that yes, culture does play a part in how we play, while the eastern one tends to focus on coordination and not being a burden for the rest of the people they play with, the western one (for the majority) couldn't give a rat's ass about what they do and how they do it as long as they get their reward. And since they don't care to get better or offer constructive criticism we get this kind of thread, and despite what people may think SE does listen sometimes and then we get reworks that are failures after failures.
I also sincerely hope people realize that, at the moment, baring the intervention of the third GC, the DRK/AST/DRG thing is one of the only sure ways to make a comeback from impending defeats.

That's one helluva sweeping statement made without evidence. Is there a sub-population of FL players who turn up once a day for XP? Yeah probably. The same is true in every roulette mode. Is this more common on NA servers? Possibly. But the natural instinct of any gamer is to try to play well and win in whatever mode they're playing!

I'd suggest the issues arise when individuals feel they have very little agency in impacting the result. Part of that is inevitable in a 24v24v24 outside of being a competent shot caller. It is compounded massively by this bizarre situation of mixing solo queueing with premades. The last Shatter I played yesterday began with the chat: "Oh well. We lost." "Yup!" when those players noticed the shot-caller with the effective premade was not on our team. I recognize this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but equally all those who cared enough to check the end-of-match stats could hardly avoid the laughable K/D/A of the same four suspects over and over again.

You don't encourage people to try harder by making their efforts irrelevant to the outcome of a contest.

[Nubrication]

There are groups running around as a DRK, AST, AST, AST in frontlines, and its very disruptive to normal frontline matches. When this team operates they can down a full alliance without much counter play, and there are several groups, on multiple Data Centers, that are abusing this to make other players have less fun. On Crystal, other players from Aether travel here to do it, and no one likes to see them in the game because of what they do.

This Class-Combo is actively making the frontline game mode unfun when they appear, and its personally irritating to see the same people doing the exact same menial thing and succeeding.

So, please nerf DRK and/or AST.
DRK's Salted Earth pull has always been problematic,
and AST's Macrocosmos has too big of an area of effect to be that good at dealing damage on top of the compiled damage returning as a heal in Microcosmos.

The '50% damage decrease after one target' can be added to AST, even just for frontline. Maybe even the same for DRG's limit break as it has been used to similar effect in the past, though in recent times it has been unfavorable compared to AST.

I know adding changes to frontlines exclusively may be seen as a slippery slope, but these would be a few the community could handle. There's already a flat damage reduction for most classes. And it wouldn't change how the abilities fundamentally function and cause confusion.

In conclusion, this method of running in to kill half the enemy team with a single button press is not conducive to a fun experience in frontlines. A reward as great as that should not be so simple to execute, especially coming from three healers.

An AST dies in like 2 hits. Just guard when you see a DRK jump in. Don't waste your guard at pointless times; or wait for it to come back up before you engage a large zerg. Have map awareness so you don't get caught unaware. Keep your map open. Easy day.

[Doozer]

It's unfortunate this thread has just devolved to arguing when these comps are an actual problem, especially on Shatter (I don't care about what you think of Shatter). I saw a team win by reaching the score limit of 2000 with 1450 being from player kills. They almost completely ignored the objective entirely and just nuked whole teams. "Just Guard" doesn't work when there's 6 ASTs on the same team all running together behind the same DRK that they're pocket healing.

Specific jobs aren't the problem, but allowing that type of party comp sucks out any remaining fun in Frontlines. I can't queue for casual Crystalline Conflict with one friend but people can do this? Sure, yeah, that makes sense.

[Akimitsu]

without evidence

Go play some FL (or any content) on a JP DC and come back. I'm not saying they are inherently better, they just try more.

But the natural instinct of any gamer is to try to play well and win in whatever mode they're playing![...]But the natural instinct of any gamer is to try to play well and win in whatever mode they're playing!

Do we play the same game? The number of times I have to tell DNCs to use dancer partner, useless BRDs and SMNs who never use paean or egi shield on anything but themselves (if even that), the multitude of PLDs who never use guardian, the DRKs who use salted earth to pull 1 enemy tank, the DRGs who use their LB to try to kill a single target etc etc... And how about the assist/damage/healing scores at the end of the games being a clear indicator of how poorly the vast majority plays? I can forgive the first timers but most players have already done FL more than once and still barely perform at an average level...
ANd the difference between a pvp and pve roulette is that there's nothing competitive about a pve roulette... I do expect ALL people to actually try when I play pvp.

snip

Funny you'd come with this comment after saying SAM LB isn't an issue in another thread. Because yeah, just guard or just run away is definitely something you can do to counter DRK/AST/DRG -unless some DNC/RPR is added to the mix-. Why don't you play SAM if these comps bother you so much by the way? And idk what possible fun you're talking about when speaking of Shatter, if anything, what that team you're speaking of did to win sounds a lot more exciting than hitting ice dummies for 15 mins.

[Doozer]

Funny you'd come with this comment after saying SAM LB isn't an issue in another thread. Because yeah, just guard or just run away is definitely something you can do to counter DRK/AST/DRG -unless some DNC/RPR is added to the mix-. Why don't you play SAM if these comps bother you so much by the way? And idk what possible fun you're talking about when speaking of Shatter, if anything, what that team you're speaking of did to win sounds a lot more exciting than hitting ice dummies for 15 mins.

I think it's funnier that you're so chronically on these forums that you can recall a post I made in a different thread days ago.

It's also funny because SAM and NIN LB are not a problem, nor are DRK or AST. On their own. Maybe instead of "snip" you actually include the part you quoted and then ignored. Do you really need me to explain the difference to you? Or are you just going to ignore everything I thoughtfully typed out to drone on about western entitlement again?

For anyone else who stumbles upon this and needs clarification, "just guard" or "just run away" from 1/3 of a team is a good way to lose. Unfortunately, trying to push said team when you can die in one frame is also a good way to lose. Guard has a 30 second cooldown and can only be active for a maximum of 5 seconds. That means for 25 seconds you are unprotected. Should you just run away from the DRK/AST/AST/AST/AST/AST/AST until Guard is back up, run in, and Guard again? Not a very effective strategy, unless you want to do slightly more than AFK. I played a match yesterday on Onsal Hakair (so, not Shatter) that had one of these comps again (comprising of at least a few of the same people from the Shatter match) and while I managed to live (as BRD) and never get killed by their barrage, my team got decimated over and over and it was difficult to make any progress. Even though I survived their attacks it was only barely, with lucky timed Recuperate in between hits most of the time. Thankfully we managed to prevent them from winning, but we also didn't win ourselves. Should I have used Guard more? Would that have made us win? Should I have told my team "just run away lol" and that would've secured the victory for us?

If you can believe it, the approach to one problem (NIN/SAM) is not the same as the approach to another problem (DRK/AST/AST/AST/AST/AST/AST).

I hope someone and maybe even you (long shot) understand my point a bit better after this explanation.

Enjoy the rest of your time on the forums.

[Mawlzy]

Do we play the same game? The number of times I have to tell DNCs to use dancer partner, useless BRDs and SMNs who never use paean or egi shield on anything but themselves (if even that), the multitude of PLDs who never use guardian, the DRKs who use salted earth to pull 1 enemy tank, the DRGs who use their LB to try to kill a single target etc etc... And how about the assist/damage/healing scores at the end of the games being a clear indicator of how poorly the vast majority plays? I can forgive the first timers but most players have already done FL more than once and still barely perform at an average level...
ANd the difference between a pvp and pve roulette is that there's nothing competitive about a pve roulette... I do expect ALL people to actually try when I play pvp.

I too would like everyone to try when I play PvP. My main point is that, in the face of highly-oppressive premades, there is a subset of players who have decided there is no point in trying, since whatever they do has no impact on the result. I think we have to address the cause, not the symptoms, whether that cause be poor balance, or the stupidity of mixing solo queueing with party queueing.

As to the differences between JP/NA, sure I've heard enough anecdotal evidence to suggest the quality of play is higher on JP servers and includes interesting tactics such as clustering/hiding. I just am skeptical this reflects some cultural societal difference outside of FF14. For example, on NA servers the bone dragon (?) gets pulled further north than on JP servers. One could attribute that to the influence of feng shui, I suppose, but I suspect it's just just how common behavior converges within a community.